After a quick yet full trip to La Suiza, the DLG team and Chet Sadler from the Sanibel Captiva Rotary traveled to the Ija’tz Cooperative in San Lucas Toliman. Carol, DLG’s Tour Manager and I (Director of Development), traveled early that morning to make it to Ija’tz around lunch time. We spent the afternoon picking Arnulfo’s brain about tourism in San Lucas Toliman. Considering San Lucas is on the shores of Lake Atitlan and is such a beautiful community rich in history and tradition, we wanted to learn more about how we can support the cooperative through Community Tourism.

On Thursday, May 2nd, four members of the DLG team (Juan - Executive Director, Timo - Technical Assistance Coordinator, Ceci – Marketing and Sales Coordinator and Elisandro – our best driver and member of the Youth Group from San Miguel Escobar Coop) departed from Antigua at 5:45 am in the DLG's good old pick-up truck to visit La Suiza Cooperative.

Before De la Gente, the organization’s name was, As Green as it Gets, which was created in 2005. It is incredible that this April we will celebrate our 5th Anniversary at De la Gente. After years of meeting and connecting with people throughout the world, sharing stories as well as great coffee, hitting the milestone of 5 years is a major reason for celebration and rejoice.

On March 2019 we held our annual Microlot Competition to find out which coffee from the farmers from San Miguel Escobar (a town located at about 1770ft on the base of Agua volcano in Guatemala) was the best. Find out who won and how can you order your green coffee samples for a limited time.

It all started with a regular coffee tour. In the summer 2017 a group of students from the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts and the Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica participated in a De La Gente coffee tour. The dedication and hard-work of the farmers amazed them and inspired them to begin a fundraising campaign. The results of their efforts were astounding!

The De la Gente Microlot Competition was born out an idea to identify the best coffees produced by the members of cooperative in San Miguel Escobar and add them to our offering list, facilitating farmer-roaster connections on a personal level. It is also an opportunity for the producers to earn a premium price and an incentive to work toward quality of their coffee. This year we hosted the competition for the second time.

De la Gente is excited to introduce the women of North Fork Roasting Company, as part of our series on Women in Agriculture and Business. North Fork Roasting Company, on Long Island, NY is a coffee shop and roasterie which was founded by two incredible woman and has an all female leadership team. Jess & Jenni the Co-Founders along with Bri the General Manager visited and volunteered with us for the past couple weeks. We are so excited to share their story during our week long celebration of International Women's Day.

Thanks to donations, De la Gente has been able to further develop the Combat Roya Program (roya is a fungus, also known as coffee leaf rust, that attacks and kills coffee plants) and continue to support the cooperatives with whom we work. In our evaluations which we undertook last year, it came to light that some of the cooperatives had lost 80% or more of their crops due to roya - leaving them with almost no income to support their families and little hope for a future in coffee farming. Some families had already decided to leave the coffee industry and find work elsewhere. We needed to respond immediately to support these farmers and their families with both short-term relief and a move towards long-term sustainability.

Our 2014 program has so far focused on the following work:

Crop replacement

Investment in established and new crops

Training and knowledge sharing to improve production practices

Livelihood diversification

Strategic cooperative planning

Strengthening networks between cooperatives

So far this year, we have worked on several roya projects in the communities of San Miguel Escobar, Santa Anita and La Suiza. We are also continuing to undertake training and strategic planning with the cooperatives of APPAECE, UPC and Santa Maria de Jesus.

Here’s a highlight of some of these projects:

Community consultations

Fertilizer training in La Suiza

In San Miguel Escobar, DLG organized a farmer consultation to discuss with the cooperative members their current needs and next requirements to treat and prevent roya. While they have been affected, due to early awareness and treatment the San Miguel cooperative has managed to control the impact of roya. Continued prevention therefore is the primary need. The cooperative members let us know their problems and came to a collaborative decision about what treatment materials would be most useful to them.

In May, DLG visited the cooperative of La Suiza, situated in the department of San Marcos in western Guatemala. There are 117 members of this cooperative and 600 community members in total. It is a very rural community which struggles with isolation, poverty and malnutrition. During this trip we coordinated a community consultation with both the board of directors and all cooperative members to assess their needs and to hear how they would like our support. We also conducted a field analysis of their current production. Alongside the community we planned to organize fungicide distribution and food crop distribution in the short-term alongside a longer term plan of processing and quality improvement.

Replacing lost crops

Young coffee pilones at the new tree nursery in Santa Anita, made possible through donations.

We have been working with the community of Santa Anita La Union for the past two years, supporting them in their struggles against roya. This community was hit hardest with high losses of crops, a consequence of climate conditions ideal for the spread of roya and a lack of inputs to strengthen their plants. We have been supporting them in replacing their crops. In 2013, we distributed 9,000 young plants to cooperative members. These plants are making good progress with the inputs and training that was delivered. This year, we also supported them in the building of a 10,000 plant tree nursery. De la Gente assisted with the planning, implementation and training on the management of the nursery. The community is currently caring for the plants and will organize the distribution of the plants amongst community members when they are ready to be planted.

Distribution of roya prevention materials

Fertilizer training in La Suiza with cooperative members

Following the consultation in June, we distributed fertilizers and fungicides to members of the San Miguel cooperative at 50% of the cost. This ensured that members that most needed them were able to get supplies while also financially investing in the care of their land. Through this distribution we were able to support 18 farmers.

Following the distribution of replacement crops and the start of the tree nursery, the next stage for Santa Anita is to focus on investing in the care and protection of these plants so they will be ready for production next year. Thanks to donations, we have been able to help the farmers apply a range of fertilizers, fungicides and foliars to their crops. In March, we conducted the first round of applications, in April we followed up with further applications of foliars and fungicides to protect their crops, and finally in June, we visited the community to apply a third round of fertilizers to boost the crops growth. Now the community can look towards a better harvest in October, and continue to invest in their crops for a much improved 2015 harvest. Alongside all input distributions we conducted training on analyzing the problems with the production, best care practices and available treatment options.

In the promotion of cross-cooperative collaboration the San Miguel cooperative generously loaned their motorized backpack sprayer to Santa Anita to help them treat their plants more efficiently and effectively.

Livelihood projects

One of the most devastating impacts of roya has been that the lack of income has led to shortages of food within households. Roya has brought to light the vulnerability of coffee farmers and the over-reliance on coffee as the family's sole resource. We are working with all of our cooperatives to encourage diversification of both income and crop growth.

In July in La Suiza, we began a food security pilot project - to bring food crops to the families. Working with approximately 30 women in the community, we implemented three food gardens and distributed a range of seeds - from radishes to tomatoes to beans. The women are the leaders of the whole project from preparation to maintenance to harvest. We delivered training on the best practices and will follow up with additional training and seeds in September. We hope this is the start of a healthier future for the families. Growing food crops is a big change for the farmers here, and the skills they have learned during training will last a lifetime.

Strategic planning and professional development

Representatives from DLG's partner cooperatives

In July, we held our first ever DLG conference. We funded farmer representatives and leaders from all of our member cooperatives across Guatemala to attend. We held a training session to cover production and processing methods in the morning, and a strategic planning session in the afternoon. The following two days, the representatives attended the National Coffee Conference of Guatemala where they had the opportunity to meet other leaders in the coffee industry and learn about current issues in the industry such as roya and climate change.

All of our programs are based on a vision of long-term sustainability for the cooperatives we work alongside, and we will be continuing to work with the farmers to reach this objective. Thank you to those that have donated to our Combat Roya Program. With your help, we have implemented projects that otherwise would not have been achieved. We need to continue our work as roya will continue to be a factor for years to come and the cooperatives and families with whom we work need continued help for the next couple of years until they are back on their feet and can be self-sustaining once again., You can donate online at www.dlgcoffee.org/donate-today.